Meeting at the Death Cafe

Just another week to go before the next meeting of the Death Cafe, so just re-posting this account of the first meeting I attended a few months back as a reminder.

It was a pleasant walk yesterday evening to the Courtyard. It was an obvious venue to choose in some respects. It’s accessible, and connected in most people’s minds with pleasant memories of films, plays and shows. Just the sort of place to attract people to an event.

There was a catch though. Who wants to go to a Death Cafe? Would the magnet of the venue be enough to overcome the unmentionable word’s repellent effect?

Well, it seems that it was.

There were nine of us turned up for the experience. Admittedly, it sounded from what was said that even those who tried had failed to persuade any of their friends to come along as well. Incredulity combined with revulsion seemed the order of the day for most people.

That was one of the topics we explored together.

Why was our society so reluctant to talk openly about death? We shared stories of how the dying were met with refusal when they tried to open up the subject with their nearest and dearest. We contrasted it with other cultures whose traditions encourage them to sit in the same room as the dead person for hours, sharing moments of alternating laughter and sadness as they remember the life that has ended.

We were a mixed bunch.

Not all of us had been or still were in the ‘helping professions.’ A couple of us were people whose ordinary lives alone had caused them to seek a deeper understanding of death. One described how she had been visited by her parents as they died. Another how advancing years and his wife’s struggle with ill health was forcing death upon his attention.

Some openly mentioned their faith, including a Buddhist whose work was with the dying and bereaved, and a Christian who had experienced healing communion services that allowed the unquiet dead to rest.

We covered many other topics, amongst others: how knowing you are dying can lead to feelings of hopelessness, boredom, helplessness and an absence of all meaning; wondering how to deal with pain more effectively; and looking at ways of preparing for our death, and helping those who are left to celebrate our lives in the way we would have wished.

I even heard of roles unknown to me before. The idea of a ‘soul midwife’ had never crossed my ken. I also had not realised that the local hospice also ran a ‘hospice at home’ service.

I was given an opportunity to voice my somewhat crusading concerns about how a materialistmodel of psychology, which I feel is still the default position, could make interventions unhelpful or even damaging, discounting as it does the possibility of a spiritual dimension.

And everyone agreed that, regardless of all the different ways of describing that ineffable reality, we are talking about fundamentally the same thing, and it is something that binds us all together. The different way we speak of and understand it should not become a source of division and disagreement.

We tackled the question of how our individualistic and competitive society could recover or recreate a sense of connectedness in families and neighbourhoods so that people would be prepared to put themselves out to help others and that this sense of compassionate connectedness would endure rather than fizzle out. The evidence that Jonathan Haidt quotes, in The Righteous Mind, was mentioned, suggesting that groups requiring members to make sacrifices lasted longer if there was a spiritual worldview underpinning them.

At the end of the meeting our attention was drawn to a website recently launched which facilitates the sharing of ideas to help meet life’s challenges including those at the end of life. It works on the basis that pooling ideas enhances our ability to create solutions. See link for more info.

The two hours of the meeting flew by. We were keen to make sure there will be another one next month.